terraasymmetry Features

SYNCHRONY: Music News, Week in Review & Upcoming Releases (8/07/20)

SYNCHRONY is a weekly feature focusing on relevant heavy music news, new releases, upcoming releases, as well as a week in review to help folks keep up with all of the content on Grizzly Butts. This’ll also include a list of upcoming releases and some preliminary notes on upcoming reviews or coverage. If I can’t hear it, I won’t cover it! If you have New Releases, show announcements, or important heavy music news that’ll be relevant or interesting to folks contact me at: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com

THIS WEEK IN NEWS (8/01/20 – 8/07/20)

  • Finnish sludgy noise rock band THROAT have announced Kaos Kontrol will release ‘Bareback (Stripped & Remasked)‘ on September 11th this year. The compilation is a double-CD remix (as in other artists remixed their songs, the full album twice). They’ve provided a disclaimer that this is not going to be a noise rock album but a set of harsh noise and experimental remixes that fully mangle the originals. I’m preparing my “Oh… cool.” facial expression in reaction to it. [MORE INFO]
  • Cambridge, England death metal band CELESTIAL SANCTUARY have signed a deal with Redefining Darkness Records for the re-release of their self-released ‘Mass Extinction’ demo tape. Up for pre-order now and coming August 28th. They’ve also announced their debut full length is complete and will be released later this year. Check out their demo online for now: [MORE INFO]
  • Since they can’t tour right now Greek black metal act LUCIFER’S CHILD have prompted the release of their entire Hellfest 2019 performance on Agonia Records’ YouTube channel. The band is made up of the ‘next generation’ of musicians who would act as support in modern line-ups of bands like Rotting Christ and Nightfall. Their drummer is really skilled and really keeps the energy up for the concert. Watch a professionally shot video of the full show over on YouTube: [MORE INFO]
  • Polish underground label Putrid Cult have announced October 6th will be the day of release for esoteric industrial black/death metal band DEATHEPOCH‘s debut album ‘Abysmal Invocation‘ on CD and tape with the vinyl coming in December.The album features guest spots from members of Cultes Des Ghoules, Acheron, and Sinistrous Diabolus. War themed stuff with a homebrewed severity to it. Check out the video for “Genocide III” over on YouTube: [MORE INFO]
  • Boomland Records has announced October 5th will unleash the flood forward for Galician heavy rock band OCEAN GATES‘ self-titled debut. ‘Ocean Gates’ will be released on vinyl and digital to start. The album is an exercise in familiar sounds and unfamiliar moods, anthemic yet existential with plenty of soaring wah-solos and grooves that range from heavy blues, stoner rock, and folkish gloom. Check out the first single, “Royal Dockyard” over on YouTube: [MORE INFO]
  • Brazilian 80’s death metal project THE TROOPS OF DOOM have announced their debut EP, ‘The Rise Of Heresy‘, will release on October 9th via Nuclear Blast‘s digital side-gig, Blood Blast Distribution. Troops of Doom eh? This is a direct reference to guitarist Jairo “Tormentor” Guedz who is best known from underrated thrash metal band The Mist and as a former member of Sepultura’s original lineup. Since he was a vital part of the songwriting process for their first three releases I’d always wondered why he’d basically left them with an unfinished version of ‘Schizophrenia’ and ducked out. Well, I think the success of comebacks from bands like Possessed have inspired this 80’s death metal attitude and The Troops of Doom bring that cavernous, evil thrash metal sound back with “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”, the first single from the EP which also features covers of Sepultura’s “Bestial Devastation” and the iconic “Troops of Doom”. Sounds great to me! Check out the song/lyric video over on YouTube: [MORE INFO]
  • We haven’t had to wait long to hear what MONGREL’S CROSS sounds like with Proscriptor (Absu) on vocals beyond the recent announcement of ‘Arcana, Scrying & Revelation’ due out on Hell’s Headbangers Records this November. As I suspected! “Suffer the Witch to Live” is epic thrashing black metal of the highest order. The cadence is pure Mongrel’s Cross and the voice is pure black metal, a very centered and focused performance throughout the song. Lofty but never so carried away that things lose direction, this is a smart evolutionary step for the band’s style. Check out “Suffer the Witch to Live” over on YouTube: [MORE INFO]
  • Part of Magnetic Eye Records‘ nostalgia focused Redux whole album covers compilations Alice in Chains classic grunge metal album ‘Dirt’ receives the full treatment by way of underground sludge, doom and noise rock bands with ‘Dirt (Redux)’. I personally did not love what they’d done to Helmet’s ‘Meantime’ a few years back and well, I’m a little bit more positive about this treatment of Alice in Chains, they’re a bit easier to interpret regardless of skill level and the chance for vocal harmonization is always much needed. The first single from the release comes from Colorado heavy/doom metal band KHEMMIS who have covered “Down in a Hole” and as you’d expect it is slick enough as a rock ballad. I think they would’ve been the right choice for a song like “Sea of Sorrow” but, of course wrong album! The hits are of course going to be difficult to swallow to start but I’m more interested to hear interpretations of the deeper sludgier cuts, such as “Dam That River”, “Godsmack” and well, I at least trust “Hate to Feel” is in the right hands with -(16)-. Maybe I’m being too harsh because I have owned ‘Dirt’ since it came out and I don’t want anyone to touch it? I dunno, maybe you’ll feel the nostalgia a bit more. [MORE INFO]
  • Are you ready for another USA NAILS album? I sure as fuck am! their blend of post-punk, noise rock, and criticism of various cult of personality and influence reaches a new high on ‘Character Stop‘, the fifth album from the band and second through the now Portland, Oregon based Hex Records. It comes out October 23rd and you can preview the opening track “Revolution Worker” over on Bandcamp: [MORE INFO]
  • Finnish blackened death metal band PROSCRIPTION have announced their debut full-length, ‘Conduit‘, will released via Dark Descent Records this September 24th. This project is masterminded by Christbutcher who is best known for his time in Maveth, the line-up also includes members of Lantern. So, that is reason enough to buy it honestly. The vile eruption that is the first single “Voiceless Calling” comes with great immediacy and austere virulence, a grotesquely blackened Immolation-esque attack that soon begins to rend the sky with sprays of fire and the screams of the burning dead. A huge introduction to what promises to be a huge album. [MORE INFO]
  • The title track and third single from THE PINEAPPLE THIEF‘s latest album ‘Versions Of The Truth’ has received a music video. Hold on metalhead, this is a pretty chilled out prog rock song. I’ve highlighted it here because I’m impressed with the album, which releases September 4th on Kscope. This is perhaps the most accessible release from the band yet and the title track is maybe the spearhead of that notion, a meditation upon dissatisfaction with the massive loss of grip on reality that we’re seeing amongst all generations of people today. The death of the truth is a far more destructive and unacceptable thing than many realize, especially when folks so easily resign to it. Watch the video over on YouTube: [MORE INFO]
  • British death metal legends BENEDICTION announced a new album? I didn’t get a presser for it but here’s a last minute addition. ‘Scriptures‘ releases October 16th on Nuclear Blast Records! Cool. [MORE INFO]
  • NOTABLE ALBUMS AT PRESS THIS WEEK FROM: Plague Years, Cytotoxin, Idolatria, Black Magnet, Tyranno, Countless Skies, Blasphemous Putrefaction, Horde of Hel, Hadron, Abatuar, Deathepoch, Torch, Crafting the Conspiracy, Black Communion, Next Life, Grid, Gride, Proscription, Coexistence, and several more. Look for coverage in the near future. Don’t see your album listed? Send it to me: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com

GRIZZLY BUTTS‘ WEEK IN REVIEW (8/01/20 – 8/07/20)

FEATURES:

  • …From the Tomb 8/03/20: “Evil is the gaze that sees evil as a thing apart from me.”
    • This year Ten From the Tomb changes to …From the Tomb and is no longer limited to ten releases. It will post every Monday with a list of at least ten new releases coming out during that current week and a short review will be included for each one.
    • This week I chose to cover 10 New Releases from June 12th-June 25th. There are too many things releasing on June 26th, and that’ll mean next weeks entry will deal solely with albums released that day.
    • Favorites: Vassafor, Angel Morgue, Scars, .
  • An early stream of NOVAE MILITIAE’s “Faithfully Reduced to Ashes” from ‘Topheth’ (2020) | PREMIERE
    • French orthodox black metal project Novae Militiae reign among the most stunning, soul-crushing, blackened abyss conjurers today and their second full-length ‘Topheth’ is an album I stand behind in full support. Goathorned Productions have been kind enough to allow earth premiere of the second single from the album “Faithfully Reduced to Ashes”, a primal vacuum of millennia of Christian blood into the void of wastrel death!
  • An early stream of TEMPLE NIGHTSIDE’s ‘Pillars of Damnation’ (2020) | PREMIERE
    • Australian blackened death metal band Temple Nightside have long been beloved and collected in my own solitary circle so you can imagine my skeleton ripping out its flesh in ecstatic convulsions when I’d been pitched the premiere for their latest, and probably most incredibly riff-crammed record to date. It is an honor to have presented it prior to release. Hail death, and thanks.
  • The Top 20 Albums of July | 2020
    • Your guide to the best of the best in retrospect of this July 2020.
    • INCLUDES: Question, Lantern, Bedsore, Purification, Convocation, Draghkar, Protomartyr, Khthoniik Cerviiks, ILS, Valgrind, Valkyrie, The Funeral Orchestra, Disavowed, Taake/Deathcult, Merlock, Foul, Fides Inversa, Rites of Daath, Defeated Sanity, Maggot Heart.

REVIEWS

Big releases this week from Messiah, Faceless Burial, Obsecration, Temple Nightside, Astriferous, Sanity Control, Vassafor, Batushka, and many more. Selbst also released a new album but it was not sent to me for review, so I’ll have to wait and make personal time for it. Great week for death metal in particular. I totally spaced on Sanity Control in terms of the review, it will publish next week. Same goes for Obsecration and Batuskha, those digipaks just came on Wednesday and I wanted more time with them to consider the packaging and lyrics, expect those next week or nearby. Faceless Burial review coming this weekend along with Entartung, Purification, and Rope Sect. I have been doing my best to catch up on my backlog of reviews, some are half-drafted and I should be able to clear my plate soon. I’m also starting to send out interviews at a high rate, expect more of that sort of thing coming up if even half of it pans out.

[CLICK THE IMAGE FOR THE FULL REVIEW]

FIDES INVERSA – Historia Nocturna (2020) | REVIEW
THE FUNERAL ORCHESTRA – Negative Evocation Rites [Vinyl] (2020) | REVIEW
SEPULCHRAL CURSE – Only Ashes Remain (2020) | REVIEW
DEFEATED SANITY – The Sanguinary Impetus (2020) | REVIEW
MESSIAH – Fatal Grotesque Symbols-Darken Universe (2020) | REVIEW
ASTRIFEROUS – The Lower Levels of Sentience (2020) | REVIEW
FACELESS BURIAL – Speciation (Dark Descent/Me Saco Un Ojo)

RELEASED/RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK (8/01/20 – 8/07/20)

NOTE: This small sample includes overlooked releases that are either not yet reviewed or covered but nonetheless recommended. Some of these will still be featured in other coverage. An asterisk (*) indicates that a review is drafted or in preparation. A plus (+) indicates that the album has already been reviewed. Click/Tap on RECORD LABEL name for preview, stream, or store.

PROSANCTUS INFERI – Hypnotic Blood Art (Nuclear War Now! Productions)

UPCOMING RELEASES (8/08/20 – 8/14/20)

NOTE: This is not a comprehensive list, some titles are already reviewed and/or covered and some have yet to enter the final queue for consideration and processing. An asterisk (*) indicates that a review is drafted or in preparation. A plus (+) indicates that the album has already been reviewed. Click/Tap on RECORD LABEL name for preview, stream, or store.

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